


solace in blue

by Pixielle



Category: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Genre: Character Study, Domestic Bliss, Established Relationship, Gift Fic, Hypersensitivity, Light Angst, Loss of Innocence, M/M, No Plot/Plotless, No Smut, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, but i've done weirder things in homage to my love of the elf and the shark man, how did i manage that?? isn't everything either plot or smut, i guess not, survivor's guilt, this is probably a bit boring if you don't love them as characters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-03
Updated: 2019-06-03
Packaged: 2020-04-07 08:19:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,857
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19081135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pixielle/pseuds/Pixielle
Summary: Link finds his way home after helping Zelda out on a trade exchange; home being a relative term.





	solace in blue

_Cut from devotion, lost in an ocean_

_Out of emotion for you._

_I'm a machine_

_An emotional being._

  
His body is one-hundred percent coated in a layer of ancient dust, the flowing fabric around his body doing nothing to keep his skin clean. Link wishes that the ancient Sheikah teleportation mechanism would somehow magically eviscerate the grit when he travels (but he’s grown used to the feeling by now).

 

The sand sticking into the sole of his feet has since rubbed them raw, and he decides to ditch his shoes back into his pack. The fabric of the thin, desert friendly shoe is already soaked through from the perpetual dampness of the Domain anyways, not to mention the lack of grip against the ever-present stone. He was definitely never going to live down the time when he absentmindedly paraglided into the center near Mipha’s statue while sleep deprived and slid down half a flight of stairs. He landed at the bottom, flat on his ass. He thanked Hylia that no one was really around except for a single guard a few dozen yards away, he thinks it was probably Bazz based on the snickers.

 

He blushes to no one at the memory for a second, face warm, but as he sets his bare feet back down onto the cold, slick stone a calmness falls over him. The damp chill tends to his sore feet as he slowly walks through the eerily quiet Domain towards the royal household’s quarters. It’s started to feel like routine, more so than his home in Hateno, and he finds that less scary than it should be.

 

His stroll ends at Sidon’s door, and while he debates for a second if he should just go down to the communal sleeping pools for the rest of the night, he decides to not be a baby for once. Sidon is most likely asleep already anyways, and he was a hard sleeper who probably wouldn’t even notice Link come in.

 

Zelda had held him to assist for later than expected, as there was recent Yiga activity near a Gerudo outpost. There were no squabbles at the trade point, and everything worked out as it was supposed to. Link’s “security guard” job was less and less important these days, with the Hylian Guard getting better and better established, but for a small swap like this it wasn’t worth doing a formal deployment to the region.

 

Callused hands skip thoughtfully along the door handle for another moment, before pushing it down and quietly slipping through the small crack. He drops his gear and the majority of his  clothes towards the door to keep as much sand out of the water system as possible. It was something that beleaguered the servants to no end, as it wasn’t taken away from the shallows with as much ease as other debris, and Link preferred to do his part to begin with instead of feeling bad later.

 

Link had been incorrect about assuming that Sidon would be asleep already, in fact he was nowhere to be seen. Link decided to enter the pool instead of searching him out, the prince could be held in conversations with his father for hours in the evenings after their formal duties were done, but it rarely went on this late.

 

The stones embedding along the walkway and around the edge the pool made for a gentle teal glow against the darkness as he waded up to his knees. Sidon’s pool was also lined with rock salt crystals, sanded to a flat face, slowly dissolving through the immediate water before it was rushed away with the flow of the river. The prince’s Zoran subtype demanded it, and it also gave him a good excuse to have a private pool.

 

The salt in the water lightly stung Link’s rough feet, but in a way that he could feel it healing away the soreness of his day in the desert. The sting also reminded him to wrap his hair up into a more solid bun before settling down into the water. This usually saved him the mess of raking through it tomorrow with salt dried into it, but sometimes it couldn’t be avoided. Namely when Sidon gently drug his blunted claws along his scalp, ever fascinated by Link’s hair as he had never been exposed to it, and was never close enough to a Hylian for it to be polite to investigate the curiously soft hair.

 

Wading to the other deeper side towards the open set of doors that face the center of the principality, Link looked intently up at the moon, as it neared its fullest. He used to flinch in acknowledged fear as he noticed the state of it, but the Blood Moon had not again risen since the night of the Calamity’s demise. Now, all the moon reminded him of, in its peaceful pale grey blue, was how it throws itself against the luminous gems throughout the Domain, lighting his way back home.

 

He folded his arms over themselves and rested his chin on them to watch the sky for a moment, intending to have a moment of meditation and solitude before the prince returned to his sleeping quarters. The silence and exhaustion and gently rushing water soon wraps around him and sleep overtook him.

 

_**I thought I’d seen enough red, blazing crimson red, for a lifetime. And then I saw you.** _

 

~

 

_I found God_

_I found him in a lover_

_When his hair falls in his face_

_And his hands so cold they shake._

 

Sidon’s jaw drops slowly into a wide yawn, showing off his teeth and sticking his tongue out of his mouth in a very undignified way for a prince. Muzu definitely would have scolded him if the old stingray had been around. He drags his feet as he walks to his room, raising his arms up to stretch out his aching muscles. Shoving an apex predator into a throne for eight hours was never a good idea, but his father insisted that he should get used to the sacrifices necessary for his future while he was still here and had time to adjust.

 

With the largest threat to Zora’s Domain and Hyrule extinguished by the Hero and the Princess, and his four-hundredth hatching anniversary approaching, the Zoran king began to feel that his time in leadership was approaching its end. Sidon respected his father in all that it was appropriate, but it made him terribly sad that soon he would be the only one remaining of his family. It made his heart twinge thinking about his sister, and how he would have been so incredibly proud to stand by her side as an adult when she would be crowned Queen. Would have been…

 

When he was younger, in anguish Sidon had mentioned to his father, after Mipha had been taken by Ganon and the Hylian champion lay beneath the ground healing from his mortal wounds unbeknownst to all, that his memories of his sister were fleeting to him now. Trauma and adolescence had robbed him, and he felt incredible guilt over it. The Zoran Elders still looked at him with frustrating pity in their eyes, but Dorephan simply gave him a somber smile, promising that he could never completely forget her, and admitted the pain he felt that many of the youngest Zoras would never get to know Mipha as she was in life. Her statue was completed and placed in the main square permanently within the year.

 

Eyes struggling to stay awake, his melancholy memories fled him for the time being, he pulled off the jewelry and whistle from his neck whilst turning down the final corridor to minimize the time before hitting the water. Opening the door, he staggered around the dusty adventurer’s pack, not even registering what it was and dropped the jewelry onto his writing desk as he passed.

 

Hearing a snuffle, his eyes flicked open completely to see his love stirring at the end of the pool. A small smile passed across Sidon’s face, pleased that everything had worked out well enough that Link wasn’t held in the Gerudo Desert overnight and that he chose to come back to the Domain so quickly. He didn’t notice Link’s frightened reaction to the noise, only seeing the halo throwing off of his pale hair from the bright moonlight. The gentle shallow dive into into the pool was as natural to Sidon as breathing, yet still it would have looked delicately beautiful and deathly precise to any random outsider.

 

~

 

_I found a martyr_

_He told me that he'd never_

_With his educated eyes_

_And his head between my thighs-_

_I found a savior._

 

Link spooked awake at the metallic thump of something dropping onto the stone desk. The fear was fleeting, as he floundered to catch the ledge that he had pushed off of in surprise. However, milliseconds later when he finally turned around there was no one standing near the desk. Then, suddenly, he felt solid arms grasp around his middle and started to pull him under the water towards them. Link thrusted his free arm out in reaction, water splashing as he hit something solid. The grip loosened noticeably as the unknown Zora started to surface, bubbles from startled gills irritating the serene water at the end of the pool.

 

“Well, ow…”

 

Sidon had a small pout on as soon as he’d fully surfaced, water only up to his waist, with his hand running along his head to rub against the already bruising crest. A gasp of surprise made his eyes flick up to look at Link before he rushed at him, and started to scramble-climb Sidon as if he were some sort of cliffside. Sidon’s hands slipped away from the pulsing injury before hesitantly helping him upwards. Feeling the flutter of hands signing against his skin, he paused to pay attention.

 

_**“I’m so sorry, you scared me. I was deep in a dream until you dropped your collarwear on the desk,”**_  Link cautiously placed his hands onto Sidon’s tail after finishing, which seemed to have gotten the brunt of the assault. As he gently rubbed the pads of his fingers in circular motions, a soft moan of residual pain left the prince, but Sidon leaned into the touch before taking a steadying breath.

 

“I suppose I did deserve that. I apologize as well, it slipped my mind that the darkness is so much darker for Hylians. Though I am pleased to see that the years away from active combat haven’t dampened your self defense ability.”

 

Link sat back into Sidon’s embrace to meet his eyes, his hands sliding forward off of his crest as Sidon tipped his head back and sat down into the water again. A cheesy smile was thrown Link’s way, and like always the serious tone shattered. The Hylian shook with the giggle that went through him as he leaned forward into the clinging embrace, and Sidon began to float on his back as a cloud passed in front of the moon, once again bathing them in the bright blue glow of luminous stone.

**Author's Note:**

> i've wanted to write something for these two for literally years now because i love them so much, but for some reason i just couldn't spit it out! this is just a little gift piece for one of my fellow sidlink friends, Laney, who brought me back korean ramyun from her vacation (lmao, i know, true story, if i was a dog i'd be the treat motivated kind). 
> 
> originally i planned on writing some smut for this, but i wasn't feeling up to it this week. there may be a chapter two to this someday if i feel inclined to finish that part up :)
> 
> [ "me finally writing a new fic" in action ](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D66iNUgWwAESMsR.png)\- p.s. Happy PRIDE!!  
> [ twitter ](https://twitter.com/pixielle22)  
> [ tumblr ](https://pixielle.tumblr.com/)


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